Thanks to Kyle Massey at Arkansas Business, folks who long ago gave up on Pine Bluff have another reason to believe in the afterworld--not just for people but for the cities they live in. Once the gateway to the Arkansas Delta, the old river town was so far gone that Lou Ann Nisbett of the Economic Development Alliance of Jefferson County was promoting it as an ideal setting for a television series like The Walking Dead. What's more, she said she could arrange to have a score of tumble-down old buildings right in the arteriosclerotic heart of old Pine Bluff blown up if that's what the script called for.
Historic preservation long has been a sound investment here in Arkansas, but it seems that historic devastation might also have its uses when it comes to economic development. And why not? Ghost towns, like the ghost signs that are revealed when old structures are torn down, can offer a fascinating view into the past, sure to attract not just tourists but the investor with an eye out for productions that were once hits and can be star-studded attractions yet again.
Much like the city it once adorned, the now boarded-up old Hotel Pines waits to live again, maybe as the star of a hit TV series. Old-timers who weren't around for the rise of the Hotel Pines in another century may still remember its floor-by-floor decline. Happily, many of its once glowing features were carefully taken apart and stored away--like the sets for an opera that might be put on again some glorious day. Think of some almost forgotten production of Mozart's younger years brought to life.
There's nothing as new as the old revised, revived and brought back in living color, complete with all its perfections, imperfections and the whole range of hits and misses in between. Look at what is happening in Jonesboro, where a 110-year-old structure the city had planned to tear down is being considered for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places, which turns out to be only an honorary determination since it could be demolished anyway. History may be exciting, but it's something that has to be lived through, not got around. And the wrecking crew has no shortage of volunteers ready to do their bit to destroy any remaining evidence of it.
For now the old Home Ice Co., now surrounded by a chain-link fence, continues to slide into decay. "It's a dangerous building for Jonesboro," says Mayor Harold Perrin. "Kids could get hurt in there. The building is not structurally sound. If it endangers public peace, health and safety, we're going to tear it down." The mayor's assessment and prescription covers just about everything that can be said about the defunct Home Ice Co.--but only when it's viewed without the essential quality known as historical imagination, a species of time travel that lets folks see not only what has been but what may yet be again. That quality is also called vision, and as the Good Book tells us, where there is no vision the people perish.
Step with us back to 1919, and see old cities stir from rubble to new life given that old-time vision. Our guide could be Edward Salo, who teaches history at Arkansas State University, who notes: "Some people see an old building and don't really think of what happened there. But there's so much story in that building. I don't think preservation is valued as much now. I don't think they see the connection and don't recognize the history of places."
But some folks do--folks like John Sanders, who's 68 and remembers walking to the ice company when it was run by Sam Rosse. "He was always nice," Mr. Sanders recalls. "I'd bring back a bag of ice nearly every day for my refrigerator. If it's going to be gone, I'm going to miss it."
So will all of us who realize how precious a youngster's childhood memories are, and deeply engraved in our personalities. Rather than erase them, why not revive them? And leave something for our own children and grandchildren to pass on to theirs.
Historical monuments, like gravestones, represent a link between the living and dead, between the generations that have passed and those yet to come. There's no good reason to destroy them, especially in an absence of mind, for all of us are the results of what we have experienced.
The body often grows old, but that invaluable thing called the self goes on. Why destroy it? For to destroy it is to destroy our very selves.
Editorial on 04/01/2017